Given the beauty, maturity and inventiveness of so much of its
music it is astonishing to realise that Il trionfo del Tempo
e del Disinganno was writtenwhen Handel was no more
than 22. The young composer came to Italy in 1706, perhaps going
initially to Florence; by January 14th of the following
year (at the latest) he was in Rome. One of the patrons towards
whom Handel gravitated was Benedetto Pamphili (1653-1730), scion
of one of the great Roman families, grand-nephew of Pope Innocent
X, who made him a Cardinal in 1681. Pamphili was a distinguished
patron of the arts, as discussed in Lina Montalto’s book Un
mecenate in Roma Barocca: il Cardinale Benedetto Pamphili
(1955); an important art-collector and patron of architectural
projects, Pamphili’s musical interests led him to extend his patronage
to many composers, including Corelli, Alessandro Scarlatti, Pasquini
and Gasparini, as well as Handel. An important member of the literary
circle known as the Accademia dell’Arcadia, Pamphili was also
a pretty decent poet in his own right. The libretto he wrote for
this oratorio is an assured and intelligent piece of work which
hasn’t always had the praise it deserves. The problem, fundamentally,
is that nowadays we struggle to feel at home with baroque (and
pre-baroque) traditions of allegory.

Essentially, Pamphili’s
libretto is a variant on the ancient narrative of the Choice
of Hercules - of which a much older Handel was later to set
an English version by Thomas Morell - in which Hercules must
choose between two paths, represented by two women; one, Pleasure,
seeks to direct him to a smooth and easy, superficially promising
path; the other, Virtue, prompts him to follow the harder, more
rugged path, which, she assures him, will eventually lead him
to enduring glory. In Pamphili’s fable, Bellezza (beauty, a
young woman, perhaps also to be ‘read’ as the human soul) is
tempted by Piacere (Pleasure, a young man) but, partially because
of the warnings and advice given her by Tempo (Time) turns away
from Pleasure to side with a figure Pamphili calls Disinganno.
This last has sometimes been Englished as ‘Disillusion’, ‘Enlightenment’
or ‘Insight’. It is hard to translate it satisfactorily by a
single English word. The word inganno means a deception.
It is used several times in Pamphilo’s libretto; Bellezza’s
mirror, which she finally throws to the floor, is said to have
devised tanti inganni alla beltà (so many deceits/deceptions
for beauty); the finally rejected Piacere acknowledges, at the
close of the work, that l’inganno è il miosolo alimento:
deception is my only food. Disinganno is the power which enables
us to see through and beyond inganni (deceptions) and
see the Truth plain and uncovered - if we have to settle for
one word ‘Truth’ might be a not-too-misleading translation.
In the nature of allegorical representation, it isn’t entirely
clear whether that power resides within our own minds or whether
it has to be acquired under the influence of some external power.
Pamphili’s whole fable is an externalisation of moral and psychological
struggles. In that sense it is like many a great baroque painting
of the sort that librettist and composer would have been familiar
with on the walls of the great Roman palaces (including the
librettists’ family establishment in what is now the Palazzo
Doria-Pamphili. The fable blurs the certainties of distinctions
between inner and outer world. It takes a considerable imaginative
effort, but for anything like a full appreciation of the work
we need to try to think ourselves into a frame of mind that
doesn’t come easily to us. If we can do that – at least partially
– we surely shan’t be tempted to feel, as more than a few writers
have, that Handel wrote fine music despite a dull or banal libretto.
He was inspired by Pamphili’s words because they captured to
perfection one of the ways of thinking most characteristic of
the arts of the age and he, in turn, gave splendid musical expression
to those characteristics.

From the very beginning
the music compels – and maintains – attention. The very Overture
embodies the pattern of antithetical moral and emotional choice
so fundamental to the work as a whole. A playful allegro, full
of present delight and zestful anticipations of future pleasure,
splits open to frame, at its centre, a contrasting adagio in
the minor, full of unease and uncertainty. The Overture is succeeded
by a kind of soliloquy by Bellezza, addressing her image in
the mirror, in which her satisfaction in her own beauty is shot
through with the knowledge – but it is not knowledge on which
she seems prepared to act – that it can’t last for ever. We
might say of her at this point what Alexander Pope’s says of
Belinda in The Rape of the Lock (written less than ten
years after Il trionfo): “the Nymph intent adores / With
Head uncover’d, the Cosmetic Pow’rs. / A heav’nly Image in the
Glass appears, / To that she bends, to that her Eyes she rears”.
Like Pope’s Belinda, the Bellezza of Pamphili/Handel has to
learn that “Beauties in vain their pretty Eyes may roll; / Charms
strike the Sight, but Merit wins the Soul”. As Bellezza, Roberta
Invernizzi sings with great radiance of tone and responds convincingly
both to the moral argument of the libretto and to the human
attractiveness of that which must finally be rejected, an attractiveness
of which Handel’s music so often speaks with ravishing charm.
Invernizzi is one of the finest sopranos currently to be heard
in the baroque repertoire and this is an outstanding performance,
which certainly bears comparison with - if it does not, in some
respects, surpass - the interpretations of singers such as Natalie
Dessay (under the baton of Emmanuelle Haim on Virgin Classics),
Isabelle Poulenard (conducted by Mark Minkowski on Erato) and
Deborah York (directed by Rinasso Alessandrini on Naïve).

Kate Aldrich is
almost equally impressive in the role of Piacere; her rich mezzo
voice can be both seductive (not least in ‘Lascia ch’io pianga’)
and fiercely assertive; Martin Oro sings with authority and
intelligence and invests Disinganno’s often rather stern morality
with a sympathetic humanity; his is a countertenor voice quite
without stridency and I much enjoyed arias such as ‘Più non
cura’ and ‘Chi già fu’. As Tempo, Jörg Dürmüller sings with
sureness of idiom and sensitivity, even if he doesn’t have an
especially alluring voice. His performance of ‘Urne voi’, the
musical equivalent of all those baroque poems and paintings
reminding the onlooker of the inevitability of death, has real
power, and presents a properly chastening memento mori.
In quartets such as ‘Se non sei più ministro di pene’ and ‘Voglio
tempo’ the voices are blended beautifully and the performances
bring out perfectly the ways in which Handel’s responsiveness
to text and psychology is almost Mozartian in its subtlety.

Alessandro de Marchi
directs a performance – with committed, accomplished and passionate
playing from his Academia Montis Regalis – which has energy and
vitality as well as dignity, and which avoids the temptations
of exaggeration to which Alessandrini perhaps sometimes yields
in his more immediately exciting recording. The soloists here
are perhaps not quite such big names as those who appear on some
of the other recordings, but all of them (especially Invernizzi)
acquit themselves very well. All the performances I have mentioned
– directed by Minkowski, Alessandrini and Haim – have their distinctive
merits and all are thoroughly enjoyable versions of this early
masterpiece of Handel’s. It is a work of many facets (and alternative,
equally valid, possibilities) and we needn’t, I believe, expect
to find a single definitive recording which does justice to all
of them. But if I had to choose a single performance, I think
I might well (my hesitation is because I haven’t had time to listen
again to all three of the other versions) choose this current
one – balanced, assured and radiant with sympathetic understanding.
The recorded sound is excellent – so too is the booklet essay
by Ruth Smith.

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